The Adventure Begins…
While waiting out the COVID pandemic in the fall of 2020, Terri and I had a lot of time to think about how we would spend our retirement days once the evil pandemic was behind us. We had taken a trip to Rocklin to visit my brother Matt and his wife Cheryl, in July of 2020. Part of that trip was spent in their 5th Wheel RV at a wonderful campground in the Santa Cruz redwoods.
Reflecting on the trip after returning to CT, we started researching our RV options. We wanted something relatively small that we could drive versus pull. A ‘Class C’ made sense to us and our search landed on Leisure Travel, a Canadian company. They have really nice models based on the Mercedes Sprinter chassis. We found a dealer in PA that had a couple of Leisure Travel models in their showroom, so we made the 3-hour drive to take a look.
The LT models certainly were nice, but they were already sold and the waiting list for a new model was over 11 months long. The dealer took us out back to show another brand they were selling. There sat a Renegade Vienna being prepped for delivery. It didn’t take us long to switch our target from LT to the Vienna. With a full-wall slide out, queen bed, spacious kitchen with dinette, and a bunk-over-cab, this model had everything we really wanted.
Once back home in Danbury, I started researching other Renegade dealers that might offer the Vienna. Ultimately I landed on a dealer in Roseville, CA. The same dealer that sold my brother his 5th Wheel. We ended up bidding the PA and Roseville dealers against each other. RV Travel World in Roseville came through with an extraordinary bid saving us thousands. We pulled the trigger and ordered our coach in late October 2020. We were told the wait was 5-6 months.
We spent the winter months shopping for all the requirements, based on RV blog sites, Facebook groups, and the experience of my brother. We bought a Blackstone griddle, camp chairs, a toaster, tools, and other odds and ends. All shipped to Matt’s house in Rocklin. We corresponded with RV Travel World hoping to get a confirmed date for delivery. We needed to know exactly when to fly out to CA to pick up our coach and make the drive back across country to CT.
At JFK… Bon Voyage!
Sometime in the middle of our trip planning, Terri came to me with the crazy idea of taking our 8-year-old grandson Cayden with us on this initial journey. What could go wrong? Two 60-something rookie RV’ers and a rambunctious 3rd grader, traveling across America in the middle of a pandemic. Oh what the hell, let’s do it.
So we get the call from the dealer that our coach will be delivered March 31. We book our one-way flights to Sacramento for April 6th, and away we go. Head first into our new adventure with no idea if any of this will work out.
Keep reading if you want to know… as the late Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story”.
